MR
Elastography Inversions Without Phase Unwrapping

Kevin John Glaser1, Richard Lorne Ehman1

1Radiology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN,
USA

MR elastography (MRE) is a phase-based technique for
noninvasively measuring the mechanical properties of tissue in vivo. MRE data
can be adversely affected by unmanageable phase aliasing due to motion, SNR,
and various magnetic field effects, which can degrade estimates of material
properties like the shear stiffness. This work derives and demonstrates a
method for processing MRE data without having to unwrap the phase data which
yields elastograms comparable to those from conventional algorithms. It is
expected that this will increase the flexibility and utility of MRE for
applications including brain and abdominal imaging.